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The New Tesla Model S P85D Is Ferrari Fast

Since it’s introduction in 2012, the Tesla Model S has shifted the paradigm for what is possible in an executive luxury car. It’s a quiet, understated, handsome, tech-forward sedan that is not only exceedingly quick but capacious, capable of seating seven (if two of those people are small and can fit in the rear-facing jump seats), and able to travel around 250 emission-free miles on a single charge to its giant battery pack. No other contender comes close. In fact, there isn’t any other contender.

We’ve always been fans of disruptive behavior (just ask our seventh-grade science teacher). This is why we cheekily named the Model S “The Most Important Car of the 21st Century,” and sincerely placed it on our list of “The Top Five Vehicles of 2012.” It is also why, when Tesla invited us out to Queens this week to sample their latest offering, we immediately said yes. (Actually, we said, “Where is this CitiField you speak of, and can you please send a guzzly Escalade to chauffeur us there?”)

Tesla has taken the disruption some rowdy steps further with their new, $121,000 P85D variant of the Model S. By implanting a second electric motor into the front of the car, to go along with existing the one out back, the P85D turns the Model S into an all-wheel-drive vehicle. This gives the big sedan all-weather traction—which we had a chance to sample, to good effect, in the lot’s icy, slushy, unplowed nether regions. It also gives it a shit ton more power. The result is that the Model S now accelerates like a Ferrari.

That is not hyperbole. Call up the drive selector on the giant vertical iPad-like touch screen in the car’s center console, select “insane mode” (also not hyperbole), stomp on the accelerator, and the 5000-pound Model S rushes to 60 m.p.h. with the alacrity of a Ferrari 458. And while it lacks the raucous soundtrack of that mellifluous Italian’s roaring V8—there’s nothing but a bit of wind noise, your pounding heart, and the drilling trill of the electric motor—it creates it’s own drama. Unlike gas-fueled power plants, which rise into the thickest band of their power output as they rev up, electric motors create all of their thrust as soon as they’re activated. Have you ever had that dream when you’re falling? Accelerating to 60 m.p.h. in the P85D is like experiencing that startled adrenaline-awakening-before-impact for a constant three seconds. Three seconds is a long time.

No excuses for bad parallel parking.

(Photograph by Brett Berk.)

The P85D has a few other cool trucks up its sculpted, er, fender. It is available with some newly bolstered seats front and rear, presumably to hold occupants in place during all-out runs. In the 85D version, it has a more efficient rear motor that allows it to eke 270 miles out of a charge. You can now order your Model S with a heated steering wheel, which sounds superfluous until you drive a car with a heated steering wheel, at which point it becomes requisite. And it has a bunch of neat software upgrades that get pushed out “over the air” via the car’s integrated Wi-Fi.

But our favorite feature is the new hardware—a front-mounted camera, a rear-mounted radar, and a suite of ultrasonic sensors—that will eventually allow the Model S to enter into “Auto Pilot” mode, wherein it, like the contemporary Mercedes-Benz S-Class, will in many circumstances be able to start, stop, steer, drive, navigate, park, speed up, slow down, and avoid obstacles pretty much all by itself. (Of course, you’ll still be required to sit in the driver’s seat, overseeing the proceedings.) According to the prognostications of Tesla’s fantasist billionaire C.E.O. Elon Musk, you may even soon be able to monitor and control many of the car’s functions, or even summon it to your doorstep, via your Apple Watch.

The Model S is the first vehicle Tesla has built from the ground up. The fact that it does everything exceedingly well makes us look forward not only to the upcoming models the brand has in its pipeline—a seven-passenger S.U.V., the Model X is promised this fall, a smaller sport sedan, the Model 3 is to follow at some point—but to the copycats, imitators, and rivals that will further populate our electric vehicular future.